politics and faith

"Florida's governor unveiled a budget that proposes spending cuts of $4.6 billion to programmes such as Medicaid, but also lowers property and corporate taxes by $4 billion." <--The Economist February 12th-18th edition.

"House Republicans unveiled a plan yesterday to cut $43 billion in domestic spending and international aid, while increasing spending for military and defence by another $8 billion. This proposal comes just months after billions of dollars were added to the deficit with an extension of tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans."

"For example, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), a program that help provides food to hungry mothers and their children faces a $758 million cut. Also, the proposed budget cuts $544 million in international food aid grants for organizations such as World Vision."

"But our military and defense budget, which sends our young adults off to kill and be killed, would receive an $8 billion increase."

These three quotes were taken from http://blog.sojo.net/2011/02/10/budget-cuts-and-bad-faith/

"The sheer size of America's defence budget puts it in the crosshairs. At around $700 billion a year including war expenditures, it is as big as those of the world's next 20 highest military spenders combined." <-- The Economist February 12th-18th edition

One of my good friends used to date a girl who said she didn't think you could be a Christian and not a Republican. This past summer someone told me many people in his church couldn't see how you could be a Christian and not a Democrat. It's interesting how both sides of the political spectrum claim Christ as their own, isn't it? There are obviously some things in the Democrat party that go against my values, namely abortion. However, if we had a strong Republican president for 8 years and he wasn't able to do anything about the law regarding abortion, do we really think that the next Republican will be able to do anything about it? In my mind it's already been decided in the courts and if you really care about it than offer to adopt a scared pregnant teenager's baby and help her through the process financially so she has some incentive to go through with the pregnancy. That would probably do a lot more good than scolding her about how wrong it is.

The quotes above show some of the main reasons I became a Democrat. Republicans want to cut spending, which I agree with, just not in the same areas that they're proposing. They also want to increase spending on military and defense. How is cutting $758 million from WIC and giving another $2 billion to military and defense a Christian thing to do? What we're essentially going to do, is take more than $1 billion from programs that help feed people (WIC and international food aid grants) and give it to the military budget. How can we propose such a thing? In the same breath, I'm sure the Democrats increased military spending the last couple of years that they had control of the House too, maybe I'll become an independent.

Meanwhile, my governor wants to cut taxes for corporations and property taxes while at the same time cutting Medicaid? And this is shortly after we extended tax cuts to the top 2% of wealthiest Americans? Republicans came in on the ticket that they were going to cut spending and they are certainly going to do that. They're also bent on cutting taxes for the wealthy, the ones who got them into office. The top 2% wealthiest Americans aren't the small business owners that seemed to be a popular way to defend it. They're the corporate CEO's, the hedge fund managers, the Hollywood superstars and superstar athletes. They don't exactly need to hang onto that last 2%. The last time we made a balanced budget was before the Bush tax cuts. Cutting spending alone won't be enough. Especially if we're not going to cut the sacred cow of military and defense spending. Good luck raising taxes back up to pre-Bush levels though if we can't even raise taxes for the top 2%.

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts on this trip, and the other day I was listening to Money Life, a podcast that Crown Financial Ministries puts out. They were interviewing Jay Richards, the author of "Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem". What stuck out to me wasn't that they were defending capitalism itself, but that the president of Crown kept saying that it was a system "designed by God." I don't know about anyone else, but I really don't see how God designed capitalism anymore than He designed communism or socialism. Capitalism is largely based on private property (at least according to Crown's president and the author) and when I look at the New Testament Church being invaded by the Holy Spirit I see a lot of selling of private property. Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he owned. The farmer who was going to build bigger barns (more private property) for all his crops had his life taken away that very night. Now it's fine if you want to defend Capitalism and defend its merits, just don't say it's designed by God. That's about the same as calling God a Republican or a Democrat.

I remember a long time ago when the health care bill was being passed that my friend posted on his facebook wall something along the lines of, "Who's supposed to take care of the widow and the orphan, the government or the Church?" obviously implying that the Church was supposed to. There are some exceptions, but overall I think the American church in particular has done pretty poorly with this admonition from James and other places in Scripture. In 2005, American Christians made a combined income of $2 trillion. ("Passing the Plate") How much money do we have invested in buildings and land as Christians? I read somewhere that it was close to $60 billion ("Pagan Christianity"). Do we just leave all the outreach and medical outreach to para church ministries while we spend our money on 'important' things like church buildings? I would love for Christian churches to help set up clinics both in 3rd world countries but also in the states and hospitals as well. I am encouraged along these lines, as I just heard of a church that set up a clinic in Haiti through a church to church partnership. There are also hospitals that are Christian based in the states too so that's encouraging. Personally, I would like to see a lot more of this. If you're going to buy a church building, do something with it during the week. Let people use it to teach immigrants English or use it during the week to start small businesses to employ the poor and marginalized. There is so much potential for our church buildings if we started thinking creatively about them. We could let non-profits use the offices or classrooms to help them get off the ground. If you're going to buy a huge building worth millions of dollars, make sure it impacts the community around you and not just your members. I have heard of several churches doing this and I applaud them. Let's look at those bright spots and use it as inspiration and a guiding light to do more of the same. For quite some time I've been quite cynical towards the Church but I think that's starting to change. Of course there are terrible atrocities in our history but there are also a lot of good examples of change that have started within the Church. We have so many resources at our fingertips if we learn to empower our people to see themselves as agents of God's plan for saving and reconciling this world to Himself.

Well, that's all I can think of for tonight. Thanks for reading.

Justin